Background

“McKitrick holds a BA in economics from Queen's University, and an MA and Ph.D. in economics from the University of British Columbia. He was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Guelph in 1996 and Associate Professor in 2000. His area of specialization is environmental economics and policy analysis. His current research areas include empirical modeling of the relationship between economic growth and pollution emissions; the impact of economic activity on the measurement of surface temperatures; and the climate change policy debate.” [2]

McKitrick is a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He co-authored the 2002 book, Taken By Storm with fellow climate skeptic Christopher Essex.

Stance on Climate Change

“We deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits.” [4]

Key Quotes

“I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.” [5]

“The bottom line for Canada is that Kyoto will precipitate a recession that will cause a permanent reduction in employment, income and the size of our economy. And if global warming is going to happen Kyoto will do nothing whatsoever to prevent it or even slow it down. Why are we still considering it?”[6]

Key Deeds

The conference's theme was “Reconsidering the Science and Economics,” and its purpose was “the same as it was for the first three events: to build momentum and public awareness of the global warming 'realism' movement.”

March 9, 2009

Spoke at the Heartland Institute's 2009 International Conference on Climate Change. [7]

DeSmogBlog researched the funding, and found sponsor organizations had received over $47 million from energy companies and right-wing foundations, with 78% of that total coming from the Scaife Family of foundations.

March 3, 2008

Spoke at the Heartland Institute's 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on the topic “Quantifying the Influence of Anthropogenic Surface Processes on Gridded Global Climate Data.”

February, 2007

McKitrick was the “coordinator” for the Fraser Institute's “Independent Summary for Policymakers” (ISPM) of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report.

The ISPM's conclusion is that “there will remain an unavoidable element of uncertainty as to the extent that humans are contributing to future climate change, and indeed whether or not such change is a good or bad thing.” [8]

The need to act now is urgent. Governments, businesses, churches, and individuals all have a role to play in addressing climate change—starting now.

The Cornwall Alliance's paper contends that “All of these assumptions…are false, probably false, or exaggerated.”

January 27, 2005

Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre state their “research shows fundamental flaws in the 'hockey stick graph' used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” in a “backgrounder” produced to summarize their recently published articles: [19]

“The main error affects a step called principal component analysis (PCA). We showed that the PCA method as used by Mann et al. effectively mines a data set for hockey stick patterns. Even from meaningless random data (red noise), it nearly always produces a hockey stick.” [19]

The FoS website includes a description of Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: [10]

“Contrary to claims that the science of climate change has been settled, the causes of the past century’s modest warming is highly contested in the climate science community. The climate experts presenting in the video demonstrate that science is quickly diverging away from the hypothesis that the human release of greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide, is having a significant impact on global climate. 'There is absolutely no convincing scientific evidence that human-produced greenhouse gases are driving global climate change,' stated climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball. He added that the Canadian government’s plan to designate carbon dioxide as a 'toxic' [sic] under CEPA is irresponsible and without scientific merit. 'Carbon dioxide is a staff of life, plain and simple. It makes up less than 4% of greenhouse gases and it is not a toxic.'[sic]”

According to SourceWatch, the recovered costs by FoS from the University of Calgary for “video production” in 2005 amounted to $80,731.

Ross McKitrick and Christopher Essex publish Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming. The book won the 2002 Donner Book Prize, a $10K award “paid for in part by the Donner Canadian Foundation, which contributed $20K toward writing the book in 2002.” [12]

October, 2000

McKitrick attended a October 2000 briefing organized by the Cooler Heads Coalition where he joined other sceptics in criticizing the Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). [12]

The Cooler Heads Coalition was originally a project of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) which has received large donations from major corporations and industry foundations. For example, the CEI has received $2,005,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

September, 2000

McKitrick wrote a letter (PDF) to the Joint Standing Committee On Treaties Inquiry into the Kyoto Protocol, Parliament of Australia.

“I advise the Joint Standing Committee to recommend that Australia not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This stance is justified on four grounds.

“The relative effect of GHG emissions on the global climate is subject to considerable uncertainty.

“Even if GHG emissions cause some warming, it will be slow and largely benign.

“Even if some aspect of global warming is harmful, the Kyoto Protocol will not stop it.

The costs of the Kyoto Protocol exceed any identifiable benefits.”

Nov 22, 1999

The Fraser Institute released a report in 1999 that disputed with the Committee on the Status of Wildlife in Canada that there were 339 endangered species. Instead, the Fraser Institute preferred its own conservative estimate of 91 endangered species. [14]

In a Canadian Press article, Stephen Legault, the spokesperson for Alberta Wilderness Association, described the report as “another effort at fearmongering and misinformation by a right-wing think tank.”

Sourcewatch reports that McKitrick sent a letter to the editor of the Guelph Mercury newspaper that accuses Legault of being “blinded by ideology.” McKitrick claimed that the U.S. Endangered Species Act “imposes draconian restrictions on use of private land on which rare species are present. Since these rules destroy property value, landowners across the U.S. now work to make their lands inhospitable to endangered species.”

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.